Associatons Between Self-Reported Well-being and Neuromuscular Performance During a Professional Rugby Union Season

Hills, SP, Rogerson, DJ. Associatons between self-reported well-being and neuromuscular performance during a professional rugby union season. J Strength Cond Res 32(9): 2498–2509, 2018—Self-reported wellness is often used to monitor fatigue responses to training and competition. Constraints within team sports mean short-form wellness questionnaires are typically preferred to literature-validated documents. This research aimed to assess the relationship between self-reported wellness and neuromuscular (NM) performance during a professional rugby union season, and to identify changes in these parameters over a 12-week period. On the first training day each week, before activity, 37 players rated 5 wellness subscales (“fatigue/vigor,” “upper-body soreness,” “lower-body soreness,” “mood,” and “sleep quality/duration”) on a 1–5 Likert scale (1 representing the lowest wellness), and 5-repetition countermovement jumps (CMJs) were completed after a warm-up. Each week, total wellness, wellness subscales, and 4 CMJ measures for each participant were calculated as change from baseline. Within-participant correlations were determined between changes in wellness and CMJ measures, whereas week-to week differences and differences from baseline were assessed using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. Within-participant correlations were compared for players grouped by age and position. Wellness and CMJ scores fluctuated according to physical stress, persisted beneath baselin...
Source: Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research - Category: Sports Medicine Tags: Original Research Source Type: research